The present technology relates to a composite foam, and more particularly to the composite foam including a conformal atomic-scale film having a high surface-area-to-volume ratio.
In an electronics packaging industry, composite foams are typically used for providing at least one of a thermal, an electrical, and a mechanical property to an underlying electronic product and/or to one or more components used to build the electronics product.
Such composite foams used for a thermal management application may include a matrix and a nano-scale fillers deposited within the matrix. Generally, the fillers deposited within the matrix form multiple islands with no direct interconnection between the fillers. The composite foam may be made of a single layer or multiple layers of the matrix material to provide a macro-scopic structure to the composite foam.
Typically, individual fillers provide thermal and electrical property enhancements, and the matrix provides mechanical (i.e. strength) and thermal property to the composite foam. However, overall properties of such filler-matrix composite foam are typically limited by the performance of interface regions of the filler-matrix. The interface regions between the filler and the matrix typically present a very high thermal and electrical resistance respectively thereby affecting the overall properties of the conventional filler-matrix composites.
Further, the overall properties of the filler-matrix composite foam are sensitive to a volume fraction of the filler within the matrix. As a means to increase the overall properties of the filler-matrix an increase in volume fraction of the filler within the matrix is desired. However, with conventional nano-scale fillers, there exist several practical limits to deposit filler within the matrix due to the tendency for nano-scale fillers to agglomerate, thereby losing their nano-scale properties in the agglomerated form. Thus, the volume fraction of the nano-scale filler within the matrix is limited by processing-related limitations.
Thus, there is a need for improved composites for efficient thermal management in an electronic product, and an associated method of manufacturing such composite foam.